Prior to meeting with gun victims and safety groups on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said that a White House commission on gun violence was weighing all available means to reform laws in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. mass shooting — including executive orders the President may issue in addition to legislative remedies already sought.
“The president is going to act,” Biden said. “Executive order, executive action that can be taken, we haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action, we believe, is required.”
Biden is scheduled to meet with gun owners and representatives of the National Rifle Association, the country’s powerful gun lobby, on Thursday.
That ought to go well, huh? We’ve seen how serious the blood lobby is about reducing gun violence — i.e., they aren’t. They’re a trade association, they want to sell bullets and guns — as many as possible — and they don’t really give a damn who’s buying. If you think people couldn’t possibly be that evil, I refer you to the tobacco industry and their “smoking doesn’t cause cancer” campaign — a campaign they launched while sitting on research that showed the opposite. If corporate America can make a buck killing people, corporate America will make a buck killing people. We know that because they’ve done it many times before. Don’t expect a lot of help from that front.
But the news that the president will use — excuse the metaphor — a double-barreled approach of legislation and executive orders is good news. Short of a lawsuit, there’s very little Republicans can do about executive orders and those would hinge on the constitutionality of the order — if it’s constitutional, there ain’t jack they can do. The bad news would be that a future president could rescind the orders.
Still, the White House will get a lot more done with executive orders than it will talking to the NRA. You have to believe that such talks are merely window-dressing. Nothing can possibly come of them.
